by Derek Wilson
In reality there is no need to imagine any stolen moments of mutual consolation in order to explain the emotional commitment of these two young people. Their relationship reached far back into childhood. Elizabeth had paid periodic visits to her father’s and brother’s courts. Thus their relationship such as it was in the frightening spring weeks of 1554 rested on a shared normality, the happy memories of better days. Whether or not they ever met in the Tower, the bond between them was now strengthened by their participation in a common fear. And to whom else but the last Tudor could Robert and his family show genuine admiration and devotion? As for Elizabeth, she needed friends, and friends who would not compromise her safety. While in the Tower she had to submit to harrowing hours of interrogation about her contact with malcontents and plotters. The experience was doubly difficult for her because she had received overtures from Wyatt’s friends and if the rising had been successful she would have been prepared to have the crown thrust upon her. Elizabeth was a survivor and she valued the support of discreet people who understood her predicament and behaved accordingly. If it seems, on the surface, strange that she should have given her affection to the son of John Dudley, the man who had sought to exclude her permanently from the succession, we might reflect that there were similarities between the princess and the duke. Elizabeth also knew what it was to be caught between a rock and a hard place and to have to master the art of dissimulation. After nine weeks the princess earned a reprieve. She was taken to Woodstock in Oxfordshire, where she could be closely guarded in some comfort but well away from the political centre.
The Dudley men had to endure several more months of uncomfortable incarceration and for one of them it proved fatal. They owed their eventual release to the endeavours of their mother, their brother-in-law and the queen’s husband. John Dudley’s widow, Jane, lacked regular access to the court where she might plead her family’s case. This was where Sir Henry Sidney came to her aid, showing himself a good friend to his wife Mary’s family. In March 1554 he was chosen as one of a diplomatic mission sent to Spain in connection with the negotiations for the marriage of Queen Mary to Prince Philip. For his father, the Emperor Charles V, it was important that the reconversion of England should not be bought at the price of a fresh outbreak of religious conflict that could involve the diversion of Habsburg men and money from areas where they were more needed. Philip was, therefore, under instructions to placate the great English families and use his influence with the queen to promote harmony. Sidney seems to have made a good impression on the prince. The Spaniard stood godfather to Sidney’s son, born later in the year, and gave the boy his name. As a result Jane Dudley found herself accepted at court in the summer and with many new friends among the lords of the king’s Privy Chamber and their ladies.
However, there had to be more deaths before Jane’s surviving boys gained their liberty. At the end of the summer the eldest brother, John, Earl of Warwick, fell ill, probably from the fever which stalked the insanitary prison during the hot months of the year. His affliction dragged on for several weeks before, as a special mark of royal clemency, he was allowed to move to the Sidneys’ home at Penshurst. The scholarly twenty-three-year-old said goodbye to his brothers, and to his unfinished wall carving and set off for the more salubrious airs of Kent. Alas, his departure had been left too late and he died three days later, on 21 October.
This further tragedy may have proved more than the duchess could bear. She took to her bed at Chelsea and devoted much of her little remaining energy to writing her will in her own hand. To the very end her dominant thoughts were of her sons’ rehabilitation. She wrote:
. . . my three sons and my brother Sir Andrew Dudley stand presently attainted of high treason . . . my said will cannot take place according to my meaning in all things if I should be called out of this life before my said sons and brother have obtained the King’s and the Queen’s most gracious pardon . . .7
The duchess died on 22 January 1555 and the warrant for the release of Ambrose, Robert, Henry and Sir Andrew Dudley was made out the same day. Before the end of the month Ambrose and Dudley both appeared at court. Mary’s foreign husband was making some effort to overcome native prejudice and decided to stage the kind of joust that had been so popular in ‘Old King Harry’s’ day. He needed accomplished athletes for this demonstration and the older Dudleys were excellent exponents of tiltyard skills – though they must have been a bit rusty after more than seventeen months in prison.
Though free, the Dudleys were still attainted, which meant that the bulk of their estates remained sequestered. This was deliberate. It prevented the potential rebels attracting a following, bribing royal officials or developing those contacts necessary for stirring up trouble. Not that the Dudleys had trouble in mind. For the time being they had enough to do eking out a living. Cash was so short that Robert even had to enter a bond with the aptly named Thomas Borrowe, a London merchant, in order to meet the £20 bill of his mother’s apothecary.8
Any possibility of the Dudleys having their lands and fortunes restored depended on their good conduct and they were careful to avoid any who might carry the contagion of rebellion. The mass was restored and the Latin liturgy once again imposed on English people. All the Reformation legislation of a whole generation was repealed, while ancient heresy laws were revived. Evangelicals were faced with very unwelcome choices. This ensured that there were enough new Wyatts around to cause the government real concern. One was Sir Henry or ‘Harry’ Dudley, a son of ‘Lord Quondam’.
He had earlier unhesitatingly thrown in his lot with his successful cousin and become a confidential agent for him at the French court at the crucial time when John Dudley was repairing relations with France. For this service he was knighted by the duke. Regarded as Dudley’s ‘creature’ and suspected of attempting to bring French mercenaries over in the summer of 1553, Henry was arrested and interrogated by Mary’s Council. He confessed all he knew, cast himself upon the royal mercy and, after a brief spell in the Tower, was released. Pardoned but unchastened, he was back at the French court by the summer of 1554 and, together with the enemies of England, constructing a plot which was as widespread as it was potentially dangerous. In return for handing over Calais to France, Sir Henry was to have every assistance in conveying a thousand men to Portsmouth or the Isle of Wight. The scheme was very detailed and, considering the number of people involved, it was kept secret for a surprisingly long time. £50,000 was to be taken from the Exchequer to pay for the invasion. The conspirators who were to carry out this audacious robbery included an ex-Lord Mayor, the Keeper of the Star Chamber, the wife of an Exchequer teller, the customs officer at Gravesend, Henry Peckham, courtier and son of Sir Edmund Peckham, councillor and Master of the Tower Mint. The plan was betrayed. Peckham and his accomplices perished on Tower Hill in July 1555, but Henry escaped.
His newly liberated kinsmen were careful to avoid all connection with this plot. They knew that they were being carefully watched. Weeks after their release they were called before the Council and questioned about their conversations with known malcontents whom they met at St Paul’s. They were ordered to take themselves off into the country and maintain a low profile. Gradually, cautiously, the restraints placed on the Dudley men were relaxed. Sir Andrew was the first to be fully pardoned and his property was restored to him in April 1555. He was a sick man and considered to be no threat. He retired to the country and died four years later. It was not until July 1556 that Ambrose and Henry were restored in blood. Robert remained under a cloud. His fortunes changed when Charles V decided to abdicate his Spanish throne to Philip in 1555. In September, the new king crossed the Channel to take up his position, having offered positions in his suite to several scions of the leading families. Robert Dudley was among their number. He was eager to demonstrate his loyalty and the government were, doubtless, just as eager to send him abroad where he could do no harm (and certainly not be in regular contact with Elizabeth). He travelled with the court throug
h the Low Countries as, one by one, the seventeen provinces acknowledged their new sovereign and then in March 1557 he brought to Greenwich the glad tidings that Philip was on his way to pay Mary a visit.
However, it was not the prospect of marital embrace which was drawing the Spanish king back to England. He was preparing for the next round of his conflict with Henri II and he was desperately in need of soldiers. If a royal army was not forthcoming there was another way of cobbling together an English contingent. This was to appeal to Mary’s more substantial subjects who might want to curry favour with the regime to by attending the king with their own levies.
Robert Dudley had already made it known to Philip that he and his brothers could raise a substantial body of men for the Habsburg cause. It was almost certainly this prospect that lay behind the issue of letters patent under the great seal dated 30 January 1557 which lifted his attainder. Now the Dudleys had to make good their promise to supply the king with men, horses and harness, no easy matter since only a fraction of their lands had been restored to them. They set in train a complex series of transactions designed to provide them with necessary ready cash. Robert took the lead. All the Dudley siblings had shares in the prime Halesowen Abbey estate. First of all Robert borrowed money to buy out the others. Then he mortgaged the whole estate with a trusted Dudley friend, Anthony Forster, for £1,928.6.8d.9 Forster, a gentleman who was to play a crucial role in Robert’s life, was a substantial and well respected member of Berkshire and Oxfordshire society and served as sheriff and on various commissions. He had served John Dudley as steward of his Midlands estates and had recently fallen under suspicion of being involved in plots against Queen Mary. But politics was not the forte of this cultured and scholarly man and he devoted much of his time to improving his attractive home of Cumnor Place, near Oxford, which he rented from George Owen, who, as royal physician and confidant of Henry VII, Edward VI, Mary and Princess Elizabeth, had prospered mightily. Forster was a discreet and loyal Dudley protégé and his financial support at this time was vital to the recovery of the family’s fortunes. Robert and his brothers were able to recruit and equip a modest contingent for the 6,000 men which went over to the Netherlands in July. Robert was given charge of the artillery, presumably because he had learned about big guns from his father, who had been Master of the Tower Armoury.
The English contribution to Philip’s army was led by arch-trimmer William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. The army struck deep into enemy territory and began the investment of St Quentin, an important wool-producing centre on the Somme, not eighty miles from Paris. On 10 August the Constable of France, de Montmorency, brought a relief column up from the south. This was annihilated and the Spaniards took many prisoners including the French commander. St Quentin continued to hold out and its eventual overthrow begat appalling horrors. For the Dudleys the siege brought a personal tragedy. Young Henry, not yet twenty, was killed beneath the walls. According to Holinshed, he paused to adjust his hose and was struck by a cannon shot.10
England suffered a loss which was, on a national scale, as traumatic as that of the Dudleys. Instead of pressing home his advantage and marching on Paris, Philip disbanded much of his army and sent the rest into winter quarters. As a result, the French were able to recoup. They re-occupied St Quentin and, the following New Year, began an assault on Calais across the frozen marshes. On 7 January the town fell. The humiliation of losing their last continental foothold after 210 years was devastating for the nation and the government. It reinforced the opposition that radicals had expressed about the union with Spain, an opposition reinforced when Philip elected not to press for the restitution of Calais in the ensuing peace negotiations. This was only one disaster for Mary, for whom events moved from bad to worse. The marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to the dauphin occurred in April. More troops had to be sent to the border to confront renewed Scottish belligerence and Philip continued to demand military assistance when the next campaigning season opened. Government finances were in such a mess that the queen had to consider recalling several of her ambassadors simply to cut costs. The religious policy was, literally, turning to ashes. Determined application of the anti-heresy laws, designed to make examples of recalcitrant Protestants and thus frighten the majority back into the Catholic fold, resulted in about 300 men and women going to the stake (including Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and Hooper), and countless others dying in prison. The queen was widely reviled for vindictiveness, and then compelled to face a superb irony. Cardinal Pole, her Archbishop of Canterbury and the man on whose spiritual council she relied implicitly, was labelled a heretic by the pope and summoned to Rome. Paul IV, who received the triple crown in 1555, was a sworn enemy of Philip II and it was out of this animosity that his desire to make trouble for Pole and Mary grew. But the queen’s overwhelming tragedy was her falling prey to the curse of the Tudors. She failed to produce an heir to the throne. She would cheerfully have endured all her sufferings if her ardent prayers for a son to cement the Catholic restoration had been answered. Not only were they not answered; Mary’s mistaken pregnancies made her a laughing stock.
In 1558 the House of Dudley seemed to be suffering a similar blight to that of the House of Tudor. John Dudley’s duchess had presented him with thirteen children. Now that number had dwindled to four and as yet there were no male heirs to carry the family name to the next generation. Ambrose, twice married, had only fathered one child, which had died in infancy. Robert and Amy, after eight years of marriage, were still waiting for children.
By now Robert had emerged as the family’s leader. Ambrose, though older, was by disposition quiet, scholarly and devout. His geniality and especially his patronage of Puritans soon earned him the nickname of the ‘good Lord Dudley’. Though in the next reign he performed court duties, he preferred country life and was happy to leave politics to his extrovert, ambitious brother. Robert now sold Halesowen to a neighbour and kinsman, settled his debt to Forster and took modest accommodation in London with Amy. With cash in his purse and the risk of further suffering in body or estate now vanished, he allowed himself a certain braggadocio. He took to styling himself Lord Dudley of Halesowen, despite having given up that manor.11 The Syderstone house was no longer adequate to his needs, as he pointed out to his agents:
I must, if to dwell in that country, take some house other than mine own, for it wanteth all such chief commodities as a house requireth, which is pasture, wood, water, etc.12
A promising residence was located on the Babingley River at Flitcham, near Castle Rising and serious negotiations were set in hand. But in the end they came to nothing, and the reason is not far to seek.
The queen was ill, probably terminally ill. Her physical condition was dropsy but this was exacerbated by periods of deep depression. She had been deserted by her husband and had to endure the gossip about Philip’s numerous amours. She had failed in her great mission, for it was obvious that if and when Elizabeth succeeded her she would bring the hated Protestant heresy with her. England was no more united than it had been five years earlier. Philip and his Spanish attendants were held in widespread contempt. In some circles she, herself, was hated as resolutely as Northumberland had ever been. And she believed herself responsible for the humiliation of the loss of Calais. ‘When I am dead and opened,’ she famously said, ‘you shall find Calais lying in my heart.’
It was a time for wily men to be looking to the future. And that future was Elizabeth. Her status had changed from being princess in peril to being queen in waiting. Men hastened to commend themselves to her in her country retreat. She was now living in her own manor at Hatfield, having eventually won the battle of wills with her half-sister and gained her freedom. The fashion for ingratiating oneself with Elizabeth was led by no less a person than Philip II. While ignoring his wife, the king instructed his ambassador to convey gifts and messages of affection to her half-sister. Where Philip led others did not hesitate to follow.
Yet Robert Dudley, in this regard, was not a fo
llower. As we know, his relationship with the princess stretched back over many years. For four and a half centuries people have struggled to explain the special bond which existed between these two young people. On 16 June 1561 the scholar and diplomat, Hubert Languet, wrote to Augustus, Duke of Saxony:
The English leaders had made it plain to her [Queen Elizabeth] that her too great familiarity with my Lord Robert Dudley displeased them and that they would by no means allow him to wed her . . . The Queen replied . . . that she had never thought of contracting a marriage with my Lord Robert; but she was more attached to him than to any of the others because when she was deserted by everybody in the reign of her sister not only did he never lessen in any degree his kindness and humble attention to her, but he even sold his possessions that he might assist her with money, and therefore she thought it just that she should make some return for his good faith and constancy.13
A seventeenth-century author, Gregorio Leti, adds flesh to the bare bones of this story of Robert’s financial help. He writes of a gift of £200 sent by the hand of a lady together with an exaggerated assurance of devotion from one who ‘would willingly lose his life if that would be of any service to her or procure her liberty.’14 Unfortunately, Leti was a notorious romancer, and anything from his pen must be read with the greatest caution. Yet the story bears some relation to known facts. Not until Robert’s return from the Low Countries in the summer of 1557 would he have been in a position to render the princess any assistance. At that time he was raising capital by selling large parcels of land with the support of his brothers. Genuine affection and an eye to the main chance might both have prompted Robert to give the princess tangible proof of his loyalty. Robert would have been foolish not to take every opportunity to assure Elizabeth of his support and devotion. Nor was that the assurance of a time-serving courtier. Just as Edmund had been droit et loyal to Henry VII and John had no less sincerely served the first Tudor’s son and grandson, so Robert Dudley now dedicated himself to the last Tudor.